In two Adams County courtrooms, jail is possible for repeat drunken drivers — but not likely.

According to data compiled by the Office of the State Court Administrator, the judges who preside over those two courtrooms — Robert Doyle and Dianna Roybal — generally don’t hand down jail sentences to people who have driven drunk repeatedly.

Doyle ordered jail in 33 percent of those cases between 2005 and 2008, Roybal in 38 percent of those cases.

Instead, the two judges are much more likely to sentence those offenders to electronic surveillance, which allows them to serve their time at home. Both judges declined The Denver Post’s request for an interview.

On a recent Monday morning in Doyle’s courtroom, Jorge Beltran-Avita appears on a motion to revoke his probation in a prior drunken-driving case — one of three on his record.

The prosecutor in the case asks for a new 30-day jail term, arguing that Beltran-Avita had racked up two DUIs in less than six months. Beltran-Avita’s attorney argues that he’d already served 52 days in jail in Arapahoe County on one of the other DUIs and in a federal detention center on an immigration charge.

“I think we’ve done enough jail in this case,” Doyle says, reinstating probation and giving Beltran-Avita credit for the 30 days he had already served.

Rena Brown also goes before Doyle that day on a motion to revoke probation — this one after she racked up a second ticket for driving while ability impaired just weeks after being sentenced on her first one.

“She didn’t even go a month,” prosecutor Paul Nitze tells Doyle, also noting that Brown had also been arrested in an assault case in Jefferson County.

But public defender Calyn Arnold says Brown had served her sentence for the second DWAI and had gotten three years’ probation for the assault. She asks for another chance at probation. Doyle, a prosecutor and magistrate before being appointed a judge in 2004, agrees.

In less than a year, she had been arrested twice for drinking and driving, for marijuana possession, and for assault. Her total time on all charges: 15 days of home detention.

On a Thursday in Roybal’s courtroom, she encounters a 14-year-old stopped for drunken driving in his father’s car, a 19-year-old drunken driver, a second offender who left the scene of an accident and had a third charge pending, a man with a 0.219 percent blood-alcohol level, a three-time drunken driver, and two four-time drunken drivers.

She imposes one jail sentence in those cases.

Roybal, a former prosecutor and magistrate appointed to the bench in 2003, informs repeat offenders of the “minimum mandatory 10-day sentence that the court must impose,” warns them they could actually spend a year in jail — then explains that in some plea-bargained cases, prosecutors do not oppose in-home detention for the mandatory portion of the sentence.

Michael Valencia had been arrested for his third DUI and other charges. Roybal sentences him to 180 days in jail, but permits work release.

“If you pick up a fourth offense, you’re looking at a year in the county jail,” she says.

Minutes later, Jason Candelarie comes in on his fourth offense. He had been arrested on a litany of charges: DUI, driving with an alcohol-related license suspension, possessing marijuana, eluding police, resisting arrest.

Prosecutor James Houtsma asks for a year in jail. Candelarie’s attorney, James Angell, argues that his client had changed his behavior, enrolled in classes, got treatment for an underlying mental illness, avoided alcohol and was the sole support for his wife and children.

Over the prosecutor’s objection, Roybal allows Candelarie to spend one year in a work-release program.

“You do lose your work release — you could do straight jail time. That’s a serious break for you,” she says. “If you pick up another offense, I will have no problem with putting you a year in jail, no work release.”

Brian Zaeske, who comes to court the same day on his fourth offense, doesn’t get the same break.

He has the same attorney, Angell, but the judge isn’t swayed by his attorney’s argument that Zaeske hadn’t gotten treatment and was a single father.

Roybal notes Zaeske had been driving with a 0.247 percent blood-alcohol level — three times the DUI limit.

“Mr. Zaeske, that tells me you have an incredible tolerance for alcohol,” she says. “You’re just lucky, sir, that you didn’t kill yourself or someone else.”

David Olinger is an investigative journalist who has worked for newspapers in New Hampshire, Florida and Colorado since 1976. In 18 years in Colorado, he has covered a variety of subjects for The Denver Post.